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seetaylorwrite's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Rating: 3.75/5
After finishing some rather intense reads this weekend, I decided last night that I needed something not so intense and short. Enter in “A House of Ruin” as I was scrolling through my kindle library.
This novella is presented as an Agatha Christie novel having a “who dunnit baby” with Clue. And it was true. However, I wish it would have been longer and the details stretched out. Being only 124 pages, the descriptions of the suspects were short, there wasn’t much background on the family themselves, and the revelation of who the real culprit was felt predictable. The book opens with a rather pun filled newspaper article that describes the death of the Eylers family. It then fast forwards 40 years to where the estate manager for the Eylers family has agreed to sit for an interview on the cold case and recall his side of the events and see if we can get the case closed. Each chapter starts in present time and rewinds back to the past as he describes characters and motives for the murders.
All in all, this quick read was fun and had me guessing but I feel like I figured out who did it was too soon. It was a nice change of pace, though!
After finishing some rather intense reads this weekend, I decided last night that I needed something not so intense and short. Enter in “A House of Ruin” as I was scrolling through my kindle library.
This novella is presented as an Agatha Christie novel having a “who dunnit baby” with Clue. And it was true. However, I wish it would have been longer and the details stretched out. Being only 124 pages, the descriptions of the suspects were short, there wasn’t much background on the family themselves, and the revelation of who the real culprit was felt predictable. The book opens with a rather pun filled newspaper article that describes the death of the Eylers family. It then fast forwards 40 years to where the estate manager for the Eylers family has agreed to sit for an interview on the cold case and recall his side of the events and see if we can get the case closed. Each chapter starts in present time and rewinds back to the past as he describes characters and motives for the murders.
All in all, this quick read was fun and had me guessing but I feel like I figured out who did it was too soon. It was a nice change of pace, though!
yvo_about_books's review
3.25
Finished reading: February 13th 2023
"Was it so shocking that a person could kill a whole family in cold blood? After all, we are all capable of hate. Our blood runs black with it."
I was looking for a novella to read for the Beat The Backlist Bingo challenge when I came across A House Of Ruin. This is actually a companion novella for A Slow Ruin (which I haven't read), but I can now say that the novella can easily be read as a stand-alone as well. I love a good locked-room mystery, and the mention of a Clue-like vibe had me immediately intrigued. I do get this reference now, because it does seem a bit like Clue with the family murdered in the library and the almost stereotype suspects. While I did enjoy my time with this novella, I felt like the characters lacked fleshing out and the big twist just felt too much like a copy of Agatha Christie's The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd. If you haven't read this particular story yet, you might be more surprised by the twist in this novella, but I personally saw it coming from a mile away... I did like the structure of the plot though, with the flashbacks and the interview style. The newspaper article in the beginning was strangely hilarious, and I did wonder if it was a bit too much. All in all there were things I appreciated and things that didn't work as well for me, but as a whole A House Of Ruin was still a solid enough novella.
hollyshackzalez's review
dark
mysterious
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.25
half_bloodreader's review
fast-paced
3.0
This is a quick companion whodunnit short story to the domestic thriller/family drama A Slow Ruin, concerning the unsolved murders that happened at the mansion one of the main characters now lives with her family, long ago in '82. However, you don't need to read one to understand the other. They concern different characters, have different tones.
Mostly written in 1st person, past tense.
"The Eyler estate was teeming with suspects—a bitter butler with an ax to grind, the cagy chef who loathed his job, the gardener with a grudge, the maid hiding her fair share of mischief. Even the mailman had a motive."
Honestly, this rotten family had it coming (I'm singing the Cell Block Tango refrain here). It got to a point where I didn't even care who killed them just that they were gone. From parents to youngest child, they were all evil.
Like what Jill did to Annette. I don't believe for a second that she really thought Annette did it, or she would've called the cops. She just wanted to steal from the poor woman and used her power against her.
I do feel like the narrator, Derl Newman, has more insight into certain things than could be possible, like other's thoughts or what was happening at the same time in another room.
I liked getting to know a bit about all the suspects, and there were some interesting revelations, yet I had one murder suspect in my mind from the beginning, and my aim was true.
The humorous part for me was the distastefully puntastic article about the murders by The Times Tabloid right in the beginning. It should be illegal to make so many jokes when announcing a family homicide 😆 Yet, seeing as this family deserved all the humiliation it could get, we're not mad.
Content Warnings
Minor: Racism